Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
L.A. Daily News reports that some 42 million gallons of raw sewage has made its way into the Pacific Ocean through L.A.'s storm drains and rivers since 2007, or roughly 2/3 of the 70 million gallons of total sewage unleashed through spills, according to the county Public Health Department.
Even worse, 25 million of this tremendous amount of wayward sewage was spilled into our waterways in 2021 alone, stemming from such calamities as the failure of the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in July 2021 and six months later, a sewage system collapse in Carson this past December that closed multiple beaches from O.C. to L.A.
Officials for our sanitation agencies say 2o21 was simply an anomaly, given that no other year in this 15-year period saw more than 10 million gallons of raw sewage released into our oceans, anything less than 10 million gallons being apparently acceptable. Guessing they don't surf.
Public health data suggests that spill incidences have gone down by 70% since 2008, while the ugly side of that coin finds spill volume spiking in recent years and less of the spillage being kept out of the ocean. About 92% of the 42 million cited gallons spilled into a waterway connected to the sea happened after 2015.